Word Games

50 years of expediential matrimony, is the death knell sounding for the foremost political union of our time? In his new book, The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party, New York Post columnist Ryan Sager contends that the ”fusion“ of moral traditionalists and libertarians, long the bulwark of the Republican Party, is on the brink of ruin.Following a courtship based on utilitarian aims—libertarianism’s smaller-government guards against the moral corruption feared by traditionalists—the marriage of convenience affected the Republican sweep of government. Basking in their newfound power, says Sager, Republicans exchanged the principle of small government for a promise of benevolent government, endangering their unifying conviction and threatening to produce a party foreign to both conservatism and liberty.

Sager’s thesis is compelling, but we would offer a slightly different take. (Many evangelicals are, after all, libertarians.) The primary fissure in the Republican Party is not between libertarians and evangelicals, but between libertarians and conservatives. The former compares apples and oranges—a philosophy of government versus a religious worldview—while the latter frames the issue more precisely. Whereas libertarians seek to minimize government to the greatest extent possible in every situation, conservatives are constitutionalists: They want government to be strong where to Constitution so dictates, and nonexistent where the Constitution is silent.

Will Republicans continue to hide behind the faccade of marital bliss? Or will they confront the elephant in the room and recommit to limited government? Unchecked, the marital feud—whoever you consider the participants to be—promises to end in annulment, leaving true Republicanism, the lone child of the union, to suffer most.

In my years of reading the Patriot Post this is the first time that I have to greatly differ from what they had to say.

First; Libertarians are not at all for smaller government at all cost. They are the ones that have tried for so long, and worked so hard for full, and strong enforcement of the Constitution. ( I am not calling the current CLP a part of Libertarianism here.) All of it, and not just the parts that this, or that group happen to like. Who was it that has always sought to protect the small from the tyranny of the majority? Sure as heck wasn’t the conservatives of the Republican Party. Who was it that brought us the Brady Bill, that masterpiece of killing the Constitution? It wasn’t the Libertarians. Who got us into a war that targeted oppression..? OK, it was Liberty minded people from across the board.

Islam means submission, Libertarianism means Freedom. Figure it out folks, most Americans have a solid streak of Libertarianism in them.